The Heart of the Tiger 2: The Meltdown
by Mrs. Elena Gilbert-Salvatore
Summary: Sequel to my first story, The Heart of the Tiger. I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING!


A purr escaped my throat as Diego rubbed his head under my chin as we walked through the valley towards Sid's voice with Manny at our side. I gave Diego a playful shove in the shoulder with my head before leaning against him. As we got closer to Sid's voice, we noticed that there were children running around everywhere. In the heart of this little playground was a group of kids huddling around Sid who was neck deep buried into the ground.

"Hey, hey, whoa," Manny exclaimed as we came to a stop in front of Sid. "Who said you kids could torture the sloth?"

"Manny, don't squash their creativity." Diego chuckled.

"Hey, Manny, Diego, Silvia." Sid cried out. "My bad mammals-gammals. You want to give a sloth a hand?"

"No, not really," I said. "I say we leave him in there, Manny." Manny had other ideas. He wrapped his trunk around Sid's neck and yanked him up out of the ground and set him on his feet.

"Look, I opened my camp. Campos De Sid. It means Camp of Sid."

"Congratulations. You're now an idiot in two languages." Diego joked.

"Shh. Not in front of the K-I-D-Z." Diego and I exchanged glances. "These little guys love me. Right, Billy?"

"Don't make me eat you." A turtle growled at Sid.

"Ah, they kid. That's why they're called kids."

"I told you, Sid, you're not qualified enough to run a camp."

"Ah, when do qualifications have anything to do with child care? These kids look up to me. I'm a role model to them." My focus went from Sid and onto a beaver and an anteater who grabbed a piece of vine and started to wrap it around Sid's legs. They pushed on Sid's back and he went tumbling to the ground. We stood over top of him and looked down at him.

"I can see that." I laughed.

"You guys never think I can do anything. But I'm an equal member of this herd. I made this herd. So, you need to start treating me with some respect." Sid hopped off between Manny and Diego and disappeared.

"Sid! Come back!"

"Come on, Sid!" Manny called after him.

"Sid!" Diego joined in. "We were just kidding."

"Hey, let's play pin the tail of the mammoth." The beaver gloated. Diego, Manny and I looked at each other in horror as the kids surrounded us.

"Sid!" The three of us called out in unison.

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"And so, in the end, the little burrow reached his mommy and they lived happily ever after." Manny finished telling his story to the children and they all cheered. Diego and I sat on top of a boulder, basking in the sunlight, listening to the tale as well.

"Good job." Diego praised him.

"Question." The beaver raised his hand. "Why does the burrow go home? Why doesn't he stay with the rabbits?"

"Because. . . because he wanted to be with his family." Manny answered.

"I think he should go with a girl burrow." A bird chirped. "That would make a good love story."

"Okay, well, when you tell your burrow story, that's what it'll do."

"Burrow's a demeaning name." An antelope spoke up. "Technically, it's called a wild ass."

"Fine, the wild ass boy came home to his wild ass mother." The children all started to laugh at Manny's profanity. "See, that's why I called it a burrow." Diego let out a light chuckle and Manny and I glared at him and he immediately stopped laughing, looking down at his paws in shame.

"Can the burrow have a grazing problem?" A rhino asked. "That would make him more relatable."

"It's not believable." The turtle protested.

"They lived happily ever after." Manny insisted. "You can't get more satisfying than that. One big happy family. That's the way it's supposed to be."

"Then where's your big happy family?" The bird asked. I looked up at Manny and saw his face cloud up with despair and sad memories. His mate and child got hunted down by humans. Diego stood up and stared down at the kids.

"Then the hungry tiger ate the pesky little kids." Diego growled, jumping down from the rock and roaring loudly, scaring the children and making to run away and hide. Manny turned and began to walk away from us. "You okay, buddy?"

"Sure, why not?" Manny mumbled.

"I just thought you-"

"Story time's over. The end."

"Get out of the way!" A small voice yelled, and I looked behind me to see two young male hippos running in our direction. "Run for your life!"

"Hey, hey, hey!" I yelled at them. "What's going on?"

"The world's coming to an end!"

"What are you talking about?" Manny asked.

"Fast Tony! He says the world's gonna flood!"

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"Folks!" Fast Tony's echoed throughout a crowd of animals as we approached him. "I hold in my hands a device so powerful, it can actually pull air right out of the sky. Gather around! Gather around!"

"This is nonsense," I muttered. Manny walked up to behind Tony and grabbed him by his tail with his trunk, holding him upside down.

"Why are you scaring everyone with this doomsday stuff?" Manny questioned him, and Tony just laughed.

"I'm trying to make a living here pal, " Tony whispered to Manny before curling up into his armadillo shell and rolling away from Manny. He uncurled and stood on his feet, facing the animals again. "The five-day outlook is calling for intense flooding, followed by the end of the world! With a slight chance of sunshine later in the week."

"Come on. Don't listen to him. Fast Tony would sell his own mother for a grape."

"Are you making an offer? I mean, no, I would not!"

"Haven't you heard?" A male hippo questioned Manny. "The ice is melting!"

"You see this ground?" Manny stared down at the hippo. "It's covered in ice. A thousand years ago, it was covered in ice and a thousand years from now, it will still be covered in ice!"

"Hey, buddy, not to cast dispersion on your survival instincts or nothing, but haven't mammoths pretty much gone extinct?" A male anteater challenged Manny.

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you being the last of your kind."

"Your breath smells like ants."

"Be that as it may, when's the last time you saw another mammoth?" I leapt forward in front of the anteater and let out a powerful roar causing him to turn on his heels and run away.

"Ah, don't listen to him, Manny," I said, laughing at the scared anteater.

"Mammoths can't go extinct." Manny protested. "We're the biggest thing on earth."

"Oh, well what about the dinosaurs?" A female red and white bird asked.

"The dinosaurs got cocky. They made enemies."

"Look!" An animal yelled through the crowd. "Some idiot's going down the eviscerator!" Manny, Diego and I both groaned, closed our eyes and shook our heads.

"Oh, please tell that's not our idiot." We looked up the large block of ice with the waterfall and sure enough, saw Sid standing right at the edge.

"Ok!" Sid yelled down at us. "I'm gonna jump on the count of three! One! Two!"

"Sid! Don't move a muscle! We're coming up!"

"Jump! Jump! Jump!" The crowd chanted behind us.

"Jump! Jump! Jump! Jump!" Diego joined the chant and Manny and I both glared at him and he hung his head in shame. "Sorry."

"Come on." I said. I turned around and started running up the ramp to the top of the eviscerator to where Sid was at with Diego and Manny behind me.

"Sid!" Manny barked at Sid. "What are you doing? Get down from there!"

"No way!" Sid protested. "I'm gonna be the first one to jump off the eviscerator and you guys are going to have to start showing me some respect."

"You jump off this, the only respect you're gonna get is respect for the dead."

"Come on, Manny, he's not that stupid." Diego said, and Sid turned back around and took another step closer to the edge. "But I've been wrong before." Sid wagged his butt before he jumped into the air. Manny was faster than us and ran to the edge and grabbed Sid by the waist with his trunk and pulled him back onto the ice. Manny slipped and fell down the ramp slamming into Diego and knocking him off his paws and onto his stomach as he slid across the flat patch of ice.

"Diego!" I called after him, standing on the patch of snow that met up with the ice.

"I'm fine." Diego climbed to his paws and a creaking noise sounded from underneath him. Several cracks appeared under his paws like a giant spiderweb and spread throughout the ice around him. Diego bolted forward just as the ice gave way beneath him. The ice split up from each other faster than Diego could keep up with them. His paws splashed through the water as he struggled to keep up with the splitting ice. When he was close enough, he gave a massive jump, leaping over the rest of the crumbling ice and clung onto Manny's face with his claws.

"Uh, Diego?" Manny muttered. "Retract the claws, please."

"Oh, yeah, sorry." Diego slowly let go of Manny's face and jumped back onto solid land. I walked over to him and rubbed my face across his cheek, purring.

"You know, if I didn't know you better, Diego, I would think you were afraid of the water." Sid laughed. Diego growled, and his paw shot out, grabbing Sid by the throat and pulling him close to show the glare in his eyes. "Okay, okay. Good thing I know you better."

"Guys," Manny called to us. "Fast Tony was right. Everything is melting." I walked back over to the water with Diego and Sid and saw a large body of water where the ice should have been. "It's all gonna flood. Come on, we got to warn them."

"Hmmmm, maybe we can rapidly evolve into water creatures."

"That's genius, Sid." I rolled my eyes and followed Diego back down the eviscerator.

"Call me, Squid. Gosh, this whole thing is a piece a junk. I can't believe I live here." A loud creaking rumbling sound came from beneath us and we stopped to look back at Sid, our eyes telling him that we were blaming him for whatever was causing the sound. "What?" Before any us could say anything, the ground gave way and the next thing I knew, I was falling through the sky, screaming my head off. I closed my eyes and then a giant force hit me in the stomach before engulfing me into darkness. Cold water plastered my fur against my skin as I kicked and pawed into nothing. Just when I thought I was going to be stuck in here forever, Manny's trunk wrapped around my body and pulled me onto dry land. I coughed and sputtered as I laid on my stomach, my head on the ground. I heaved for breath and sighed, glad to be out of the water. Diego ran up to me and rubbed his head against my cheek.

"You okay, Sil?" Diego asked, laying down beside me. I looked deep into his eyes and nodded. "Come on. Get up." He nudged his head into my shoulder, helping me to my paws. I gave my coat a quick shake, water droplets flying.

"You see?" Fast Tony exclaimed pointing to us. "This is exactly what I'm talking about. Giant balls of furry lava, the size of mammoths! Raining from the sky!"

"Go suck air through a reed!" Someone yelled.

"You gotta listen to him." Manny said. "He's right about the flood."

"I am?" Fast Tony asked with confusion but quickly recovered himself. "I mean, I am."

"Wait a minute, you're the one who said there wasn't going to be a flood." An antelope retorted. "Why should we listen to you?"

"Because we saw what's up there!" Manny exclaimed. "The dam's gonna break! The entire valley's gonna flood!" The group of animals burst out into laughter.

"The flood's real all right." A gravelly voice sounded above us and we all gasped as we looked up to see a vulture perched on a dead tree. "And it's comin' fast. Look around. You're in a bowl." The crowd murmured around us. "Bowl's gonna fill up. Ain't no way out."

"What are we going to do?" A female exclaimed.

"Unless. . . you can make it to the end of the valley. There's a boat. It can save you. Y'all better hurry. Ground's meltin'. Walls tumblin', rocks crumblin'. Survive that and you'll be racin' the water. 'Cause in three days' time, it's gonna hit the geyser fields. Boom!" Everyone gasped and whimpered. "There is some good news, though. The more of you die, the better I eat." Everyone gasped once more. "I didn't say it was good news for you." Laughing, the vulture flew off.

"Ooh, he must've been a real pleasure to have in class," Sid mumbled. Something started to rumble above us. Everyone began to scream as chunks of ice began to fall from the wall.

"All right, you heard the scary vulture," Manny said. "Let's move out." Everyone started to walk down the path as Diego walked up to Manny's side.

"Manny, you really think there's a boat?" He asked.

"I don't know, but in a few days, this place is going to be a mile underwater. If there's any hope, it's that way."


End file.
